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Sunday, 9 February 2014

Nazi fatigue

"A Labour MP has apologised for the offence caused by remarks about the Holocaust but denied seeking to equate its horrors with Israel's treatment of people in Gaza."

I am so bored by people likening the Israelis to the Nazis. So bored by people likening anything or anyone to the Nazis. And bored by people complaining about other people likening people to the Nazis. And bored by people apologising for comparing other people to the Nazis. Let's all stop mentioning the Nazis in political discussions. The harm done by inapt analogies with the Nazis is immeasurable. It has led to a host of evils, at least from a conservative point of view, including the always burgeoning non-discrimination obsession. It is like a cultural computer virus infecting the Western mind. Sometimes it feels like a cancer, taking over the developed world.There is nothing I hate more than people praising the Nazis, I should add - as one or two sad people do. When I saw someone on Facebook saying

'The Nazis ran a good and interesting show apart from the antisemitism, until 1941'

it made me feel sick. But people who admire the Nazis are very few and are not a threat to anyone any more. People who worry about Nazism are generals fighting the last war. Evil morphs.

This comes from a blog post I wrote years ago:

The whole history of the post-war period until this moment is a meditation on the Second World War and Nazism. This is the reason for the European Union and the euro. It was also the reason for the Cold War and America's engagement with the wider world. Cold warriors viewed Communist Russia as the equivalent of Nazi Germany, overlooking the distinction that Russia unlike Germany was a satiated power and not given to military adventures within Europe. It was much of the reason why Stalin forced Communism on Eastern Europe in the first place. It is the reason why talk of races and racial superiority and the psychology of nations became profoundly unfashionable and why the colonial empires were dissolved. It is the reason for an unprecedented migration of brown-skinned people to make their homes in the formerly white countries where they will presently form the majority. It is even the reason, by extension, why discriminating on the grounds of sex, religion, sexuality, even age are no longer permitted by law. By further extension it is part of the reason why hierarchy can only be publicly justified by meritocratic arguments, why traditions are considered oppressive and the masculine and martial virtues such as patriotism and love of battle are no longer considered virtues at all.

For it is not just Germans that feel guilt for Nazism but, strangely, all the Western world including the countries that defeated Hitler at such terrible cost. And yet there is no such feeling in any of the former Communist countries, including those such as Romania which aided him.

5 comments:

Partly true. The EU and the state of Israel are direct products of WWII. Movements for equality, like the suffragists and the anti-slavery movement, precede WWII considerably. And colonialism fell partly because it became financially unsustainable.

I know you hate Americans, but what did you think of America's love of battle in Iraq? Was it the right war to undertake? Not challenging you, just curious.

You have mentioned in your articles on tourism that you cannot bear to come across Americans in your travels. I regret if I took that declaration the wrong way. You also seem to dislike many national traits that America has in abundance. On some but not all of these I actually agree with you.

I hate other tourists when on holiday except back-packers and clever poor ones in small numbers. I especially hate British and American tourists. I suppose American tourists annoy because coming from so far away they seem often very conservative travellers, not very worldly wise. Many of my best friends are American, as racists always say. I love thousands of things about America but dislike many too. Odi et amo.